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I would like to hear, if there are any sport interested piano music lovers here? I myself love football(or soccer as they say in America), and in Europe, football is by far the biggest sport of all, and probably the greatest entertainment business, all categories. So, are there any sport lovers here? If there are, please share me your interest and tell me about your relation to the sport!

When I was in high school, I was a pretty good soccer goalkeeper. That pursuit, sadly, was incompatible with my continuing musical studies, so I gave it up. Goalkeepers hands get beaten up pretty badly.

I'm a big fan of the American goalkeepers in the EPL: Tim Howard, Brad Friedel and Brad Guzan. My professional sports career lives on vicariously.

When I was in high school, I was a pretty good soccer goalkeeper. That pursuit, sadly, was incompatible with my continuing musical studies, so I gave it up. Goalkeepers hands get beaten up pretty badly.

I'm a big fan of the American goalkeepers in the EPL: Tim Howard, Brad Friedel and Brad Guzan. My professional sports career lives on vicariously.

pianoloverus
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 05/29/01
Posts: 21717
Loc: New York City

I taught tennis professionally during the summer for about 15 years. As a high school math teacher I taught John McEnroe pre-calculus mathematics and also coached the high school tennis team he played on. (Notice I was careful not to say I coached him because even as a freshmen he knew far, far more about tennis than I ever did.)

After today's class, I'm far more sore than I've been after any training run or bike ride.

And I got to listen to some lovely piano music while doing it. The original Sweatin' to the Oldies, the REALLY old oldies.

My son loves soccer, but here in Spain, he has no hope against the other little Spanish boys. The last time he tried to play a pickup game of soccer in the plaza with a gaggle of boys, he ended up with a bloody nose within 5 minutes. And I don't think anybody actually did anything to him malicious. I think he just basically tripped himself simply trying to keep up with whatever it is that they seem to be able to do immediately upon emergence from the womb.

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Currently:Anything that works for ballet accompaniment

Here is a sportsman famous for his elegance, and who I think is the perfect sportsman to love if you are into classical music. He is famous for his virtousity and elegance, as well as his artistic touch, which makes him almost as much of a cultural personality as he is a football/soccer player. His name is Zinedine Zidane:

I used to play all the sports (soccer, softball, basketball) when I was in elementary/middle school. After that I realized I was awful at them all, so I switched to ballet . I still play soccer once in a while for fun. However, I never enjoyed watching sports of any kind. My entire family is obsessed with soccer, though, so I hear about it all the time.

As I was (and always had been, since I was a fetus in my mom's womb) hopeless at any sort of organized sports, be it soccer, cricket (for Americans, this isn't an insect ), badminton, tennis, table tennis, etc, etc - yep, I've tried all of them at one time or another - I eventually started hiking (=hillwalking, =tramping/bushwalking depending on which country you're in), then rock-climbing, then high-altitude mountaineering......and then found that the best way to keep fit for the mountains was by running, preferably on mountainous terrain. Which was how I ended up climbing Everest as well as running the Everest Marathon (as well as several London and other big city marathons).

I lost the tip of my little finger to frostbite, but otherwise, escaped unscathed from my escapades up all those little icy hills over the past two decades. Not that I'm using that as an excuse for why my octave technique is still not as good as I'd like it to be .

So, apart from swimming (preferably in open water) - again, not an organized sport - and adventure racing, and kayaking, that's about the only sport I do - or can do.

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"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

I would like to hear, if there are any sport interested piano music lovers here? I myself love football(or soccer as they say in America), and in Europe, football is by far the biggest sport of all, and probably the greatest entertainment business, all categories. So, are there any sport lovers here? If there are, please share me your interest and tell me about your relation to the sport! smile

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I love basketball and played it 4 times a weeks. To me, basketball is so awesome because you can play it outside, inside, co-ed, half court, full court, with or without t-shirts anytime of the year weather permitting. I had/have health issues so I switch to playing the piano because I couldn't play basketball. All you need is a hoop and a ball, so almost as cheap and owning a cheap secondhand digital piano - oh, and like basketball and piano, you can play them 24 hours a day / or night - neighbours permitting..

Additionally, in basketball and piano you have to practice running up and down the court or running up and down the scales in piano. And you have to do leaps, jumps, and scores are always an issue whether you are playing the piano or playing basketball.

I taught tennis professionally during the summer for about 15 years. As a high school math teacher I taught John McEnroe pre-calculus mathematics and also coached the high school tennis team he played on.

I live and breathe sports, especially baseball. But every time I talk about it on here, people tell me to shut up.

Shut up!

You beat me to it !!

Actually I'm one of those rare birds who could care less about professional sports. I enjoy watching a football, baseball or basketball game or tennis match from time to time. But that's about it. My wife, on the other hand, is a football fanatic. When University of Nebraska games are being televised or broadcast on the radio, everything comes to a halt in our house...and any practicing must be done on the digital. Fortunately, we both enjoy watching the amazing athletic prowess exhibited by professional ballet dancers.

....and then found that the best way to keep fit for the mountains was by running, preferably on mountainous terrain. Which was how I ended up climbing Everest as well as running the Everest Marathon (as well as several London and other big city marathons).

I like watching the occasional game from time to time, but the amount of time, money, and energy many people spend on sports seems ludicrous to me.

(Especially since they'll spend hundreds on pay-per-view, t-shirts, fantasy football clubs, and spend entire Sundays watching the stuff while complaining about a $45 ticket to an orchestra concert.)

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"If we continually try to force a child to do what he is afraid to do, he will become more timid, and will use his brains and energy, not to explore the unknown, but to find ways to avoid the pressures we put on him." (John Holt)

I am a very casual baseball/hockey fan primarily because my husband and sons are intensely into both. I occasionally go to a game and find it relaxing but watching sports it pretty low on my list of priorities.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 21045
Loc: New York

Originally Posted By: Kreisler

I'm baffled by the popularity of most sports.

I like watching the occasional game from time to time, but the amount of time, money, and energy many people spend on sports seems ludicrous to me.

(Especially since they'll spend hundreds on pay-per-view, t-shirts, fantasy football clubs, and spend entire Sundays watching the stuff while complaining about a $45 ticket to an orchestra concert.)

Let me explain it to you.

Sports represents and encompasses many things that we're probably hard-wired for; and they serve as living demonstrations of mathematics and physics, and our constant necessity to cope with them and to try to surmount them. And in the media, sports serve as a near-unique instance of unscripted, spontaneous, unpredictable real-time stuff that we see and hear about as it unfolds. How much other stuff fills those bills?

About the "hard wired" stuff: Sports involve competition, pursuit of excellence, and physical capabilities of all sorts and their stretching to the limits. Do you not think we're hard wired for those things? I sure do. And how about if we're just watching, not playing? We experience it vicariously, plus we just find those things captivating (unless we don't, of course) .....because they're so key to what it is to be human and what it has meant for survival over these thousands of years. For better and worse, we're hard wired to fight, and to win. "Civilization," however, puts reins on those things -- so (I'm saying) we channel those instincts into other things, most of us anyway; some people love going to war and make careers of it, but most don't. We play sports, or we watch sports, or both. And some of us enter piano competitions. And some of us just argue about stuff; that's almost the same too.

Many sports have obvious analogies to war. I think football (American football) is the main such one, although Stephen Jay Gould wrote (to my utter astonishment, but maybe he had a point) that the sport is a clear representation of gathering of food -- and maybe that's another subliminal basis for our being drawn to sports. I don't think so, but heck, he was smarter than I am.

Some sports involve things that probably derived directly from battle. My theory of how baseball originated -- I don't mean how the full-fledged game developed -- we sort of know that, although the exact venue gets debated; I mean the way-back basis for what eventually became the game: Something like, two tribes were fighting. One guy hurled a stone at the other tribe. A guy in the other tribe had some kind of stick or club that he had brought to the battle. He swatted at the stone, knocking it back at the other tribe, and maybe killing one of those guys. Preferably the guy who threw it. It became legendary, and members of one or both tribes then began making a sport of it. Or something like that.

And worship of sports heroes.....Another thing we're (probably) hard wired for is, admiration and deference to a star warrior. Could our interest in sports heroes, to the point that we follow them sufficiently for them to be worth millions of dollars a year, be based strongly on our being hard wired to bestow great benefits on the best warriors? I think so. In any event I have little doubt that for the most part, the star athletes -- Ali, Chamberlain, Mantle, Brady, Jordan, even McEnroe .....I have little doubt that in an earlier era, they would have been among the star warriors, and would have helped their tribes to triumph over neighboring tribes and over their environments and to greatly help the survival of their fellow members.

BTW......golf, I can't explain at all. Even though I've played my share of it and was even on the team in high school.I kid. Golf is harder to explain in terms of the primal things I'm talking about, but not that hard.

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"Everything I say is my opinion, including the facts." :-)

Kreisler, I have read your post, here: I'm baffled by the popularity of most sports.

I like watching the occasional game from time to time, but the amount of time, money, and energy many people spend on sports seems ludicrous to me.

(Especially since they'll spend hundreds on pay-per-view, t-shirts, fantasy football clubs, and spend entire Sundays watching the stuff while complaining about a $45 ticket to an orchestra concert.)

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well, I don't have tv so I don't watch anything - I would rather do something badly than watch anything.

I never had a chance to play basketball because I lived in northern Canada and with one gym in a one school town, volleyball had more teams and players than a basketball court.

I got a chance to learn to play basketball when a couple of guys at work said they played basketball every summer half court. I asked them to teach me so I could play at the community center.

It was so exciting that after a game, I couldn't go to sleep for many hours.

Since I never played sports before, there are teams, of courses, there are rules and it is like a war but everything is done as gentlemen, everyone plays by the rules, sportsmen. Not the real world like business at all. Obviously I wasn't that good because I started playing at 58, and everybody played since they were little kids, but lost weight from 240 to 165 just running around the court playing basketball.. If it wasn't for my health I would be playing it today. It is all about teamwork and most everything I did was skiing, sailing, swimming, motorcycling, etc. Playing in a band is teamwork and fun but not remotely similar like basketball - or other team sports, I guess.

BTW......golf, I can't explain at all. haEven though I've played my share of it and was even on team in high school.I kid. Golf is harder to explain in terms of the primal things I'm talking about, but not that hard.

Golf utterly escapes me. Well, I guess it could be more accurately stated that I escape golf.

At work, we hosted an event at this past summer's U.S. Open, which meant we had a lovely tent and tickets for everything and I did everything I could to stay as far away from it as possible. And succeeded. I gave away reserved parking, reserved seating at the last hole for the championship round, and turned away just about everything. I even drove past the event giving it a really wide berth as it was snarling traffic in and around it.

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Currently:Anything that works for ballet accompaniment